It's just too bad . . .

Years ago DAZ made promises. Dan Farr made promises. Those of us who are Poser users resent the breaking of some of these promises more than you can know. DAZ have taken a proverbial dump on all their Poser users. One promise was when V4 was in its heyday and we awaited the release of M4. "We will never make our Figures incompatible with Poser."

Other problem promises. We ALL were promised a new website with a much better shopping experience for us Users. Uh, right. Well, ok so things are better and easier for DAZ, and the User goes by the board. This is so typical of an ethic shown for two hundred years in businesses. It's the "Board of Directors Syndrome". Too bad for the User. The forums? ArtZone? They've been replaced by something that allows far less than the little we had and griped about in the old site.

Comments

Welcome to reality and the one constant in the universe, change.
I am a poser user and don't feel like I was dumped on and I also use DS4 and genesis and couldn't be happier with the experience. Both platforms have their pros and cons, Take advantage of what you have, not what you don't..

I for one am enjoying the shopping experience as of late, no issues here so far, guess i should knock on wood or something. BTW there are other places to shop outside the walls of DAZ.

yeah, I miss the burn to disc option from DAZ, but it takes a few minutes more to do it myself, and the inconvenience isn't going to kill me.

yeah, i don't like the new forums, but it gets better the more I use them.

There are plenty of good Poser things going on outside the walls of DAZ,. Better yet, get some modeling software and eliminate the middle man and make it yourself, works for me..

As for this thread or you being here tomorrow, don't worry, we see tantrums here all the time, so they are probably used to it, LOL.

Years ago DAZ made promises. Dan Farr made promises. Those of us who are Poser users resent the breaking of some of these promises more than you can know. DAZ have taken a proverbial dump on all their Poser users. One promise was when V4 was in its heyday and we awaited the release of M4. "We will never make our Figures incompatible with Poser."

Other problem promises. We ALL were promised a new website with a much better shopping experience for us Users. Uh, right. Well, ok so things are better and easier for DAZ, and the User goes by the board. This is so typical of an ethic shown for two hundred years in businesses. It's the "Board of Directors Syndrome". Too bad for the User. The forums? ArtZone? They've been replaced by something that allows far less than the little we had and griped about in the old site.

Customer service? DAZ eliminated the account burn to disks. They gave us all the above.

I'll be very surprised if this thread is still here tomorrow. I'll be surprised if I'm allowed use of the forums tomorrow.

Michael S. McCollum
"McGrandpa"

SPOILER ALERT: if you don't want to read another post about a dissatisfied customer, skip this post.

I totally agree with all you've said.

I'm tired of being told I should just jump on the DS4/Genesis bandwagon and "don't worry, be happy". I am a paid member of the PC club and I got dumped on, plain and simple.

I bought DS3A, and I paid way more than the $1.99 it sold for at a later date, it never worked on my machine, I tried everything suggested, the specs for my machine were way above the required. I was assured it would be fixed. What happened..... DS4 came out and I was expected to BUY that to get the fix. Well, sorry, no thanks, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...shame on me.
I even used DS2.3 until I couldn't buy anything that would work in that version.

There are so many things wrong here in the forums and stores.... can't stay logged in... can't add to cart... can't get sale/pc prices,...ect, ect... here are the standard answers...
1. Clear browser cache
hmmm... that didn't work....
2. Reboot, clear cookies and browser cache again...
hmmmm, that didn't work either...
3. Use a different browser

Your anti virus throws up a warning.. use a different anti virus.

Notice a theme here... it's NOT DAZ's fault, it's something you or your machine is doing wrong... never mind this is the ONLY store where these problems occur for most people.

I'm tired of being patronized, and pushed aside like a whiny child. I have the right to complain, when I've paid for something on a promise from a company and the COMPANY changes the rules. I used to love DS, I used to love the forums and shopping here. In case you couldn't tell from the above, the love affair is over.

I now use Poser and have no plans to go back to the DS software. Every upgrade is a major pain, even if it did work on my machine.

and now I will go back to silent mode, since I know I'm about to be stood in the corner and stoned any way, since I've spoken again the great and almighty DAZ and it's software.

The new site is anything but that. It has actually taken away features many of us became used to.

For example in the forums:

One can no longer embed .gif files in posts
One can no longer embed YouTube videos
Banners no longer work as links to other threads/sites
There is no member location
The login page is now separate (and apparently elusive to find) from the store login.
One can no longer resize uploaded images.
One can no longer mix text with uploaded images

In the store/account side:

Search is still buggy
Itemised order history has no "purchase date" filter (or any filters for that fact) and is split up by pages making it difficult to use.
Sale items show no deadline
Product and Available Download pages do not list filesizes
There is no more default "View all items".
No more vouchers

On a number of these items it is mentioned that the site software does not support them. That is not an improvement, it is a step backwards.

I agree that the whole push for Genesis has lost many, some who are longtime members. I for one have an older system on which Studio 4 doesn't run very well. We were promised that before there was another X.0 release of Studio, the remaining bugs in Ver. 3 would be attended to. They were not. There are still memory management issues and features that do not work properly (like the Figure Mixer and Shader Mixer). Many of us paid for this expecting a "finished" working product, but in reality, ended up paying for the privilege of continuing to play beta testers. Instead of fixing the ongoing issues, the last couple updates to Studio3 served more as prototypes for showcasing features that would be incorporated into the upcoming Studio4.

Yeah, I know, "progress" is inevitable, it's just "biz", blah blah blah. I've heard it many times. However a lot of longtime and once faithful members here like myself feel somewhat alienated by the changes.

For the first time since I joined the PC I am considering not renewing my membership when it expires in a couple months. Yes, it's been a good ride, but with all the changes I don't see much value in it anymore.

Hello
First I hope you will undestand my English, I'm not fluent in it.
Like others I will not renew my annuel Pc membership (I have been a member since 2003)
No complain, only nostalgy.
I don't feel comfortable with DS but I tried. I liked the first versions and was about to switch on it and left Poser at early DS3A. I bought DS4 advanced at full prices when it was released and thought Genesis was an improvement.
My only concern before was the rendering quality and speed.
With DS4 I was first lost with the interface and didn't see improvement for renders (planned to buy reality but it doen't seem to speed the rendering time if you want quality). But I went on, bought figures ,adons , morphes, upgrades.
Now I'm a little fed up of this constant upgrades and changes of the software and its plugs.
. It take time to reinstall all and to learn new fonctions that will change again soon. I't money to buy new feature to complete.
For g enesis, it's rather funny, but I bought some clothes and I'm not really satisfied with the way they you can interact after auto conforming.
And now in the site nearly all the products released are for Genesis. So I don't feel this is a place for me anymore.
As I said , no anger, only a regret.The place is now for another generation. That's a natural way
I have changed my PC menbership for a prime membership and my monthly voucher is now a render reward.
And I like very much the new changes in PP 2012 (SSS !!) . I Feel the changes are more easy to learn , less plugs to run, so less upgrades. And reality will soon be available.
That's what I feel.
Have a good day

I'm pretty sure Dan and others have been careful not to say they would always maintain Poser compatibility - rather that they would try to do so as far as possible, but if it came down to a choice between providing a really cool feature that DS (and/or Carrara) would support and maintaining Poser compatibility they might well go with the cool feature. It's not as if breaking Poser-compatibility is good for DAZ either. I would point you to a recent post in which Blaine Furner dropped an extremely non-specific hint that something good was coming for Poser users, though I can understand that people will need to wait to see what that amounts to before getting their hopes up.

As for the site, DAZ was clear that features would be lost initially - the problem was that it was proving impossible to keep up the custom code they had been using, and the plan was that moving to a standard system would make it easier to maintain the site and so free resources for adding new features to enhance it. Obviously the roll-out was very bad, and so everything has been put back several steps further than was planned, but a lot of issues have already been resolved (including some mentioned here) and the others are being worked on. Once the base is fixed DAZ can start adding new features, and restoring old features, to make life better for everyone.

Notice a theme here... it's NOT DAZ's fault, it's something you or your machine is doing wrong... never mind this is the ONLY store where these problems occur for most people.

Telling people to clear their cache, or log out and log in again (which I have had to do frequently when the forum has eaten one of my replies), isn't saying that the fault is n their machines or in their behaviour - many of the early problems were related to caching, which was certainly a DAZ site issue, and those steps were something the user could do to get around the DAZ problem. It isn't an attempt to pass responsibility, but rather an attempt to find a work around while the basic problem was tracked down and fixed.

The anti-virus warnings do seem to be a problem with some AVs - they are getting over inclined to pull items not for a specific threat but for a vague possibility of a threat (all these "reputation" and "heuristic" alerts) which may or may not be a good thing generally, but is definitely a nuisance for those of us downloading multiple .exe files. Fortunately DAZ is making a move to .zip files, with an optional (download once) installer for those who wish it, which should end these issues.

I uninstalled ds, hex, and bryce almost as soon as I tried them. Same complaint, no docs, and with ds especially, the interface changes often, no attempt to follow something to carry things from one version to the next. I don't like the way the site is now, it's difficult to navigate, confusing, hard to read. PC went away months ago, maybe a year already, and with the current thrust on genesis, little I can use, but that's not entirely because it's for genesis. A good part of it is in my tastes and ideas of what I want. For a long time now, PoserWorld has been about the only place I can find the clothes I want, some on sharecg. I don't know if there's anything in an "upgrade" in my available downloads, I haven't checked, probably won't.

Some documentation for ds might help, and youtube isn't documentation, it's just passing that on to people that were stubborn enough to figure it out. Hex, Bryce, Cararra, okay, I don't have a recent version of cararra, and won't have. But alt-control-delete isn't a solution to anything and with Daz softwares, on my machines, there isn't any alternative.

Oh, well. See what other people come up with for figures and hope someone supports them, Daz no longer supports what I need.

Knowing full well how dissatisfied Poser users are with DAZ, why aggravate us further with extremely non-specific hints that something is coming that will make Poser users ever so happy. DAZ has demonstrated quite thoroughly they no longer understand what their Poser customers want.

If it's Genesis/Gen 5 that will fully work in Poser without requiring DAZ Studio to be installed on our computers, then say that's what DAZ is attempting.

Of course, it's entirely too expensive now to even consider buying into the Genesis platform.

After six years of being a PC member, I too do not plan to resubscribe. Now that I'm used to spending very little money here, I find I don't really miss all the shiney tings.

I would point you to a recent post in which Blaine Furner dropped an extremely non-specific hint that something good was coming for Poser users, though I can understand that people will need to wait to see what that amounts to before getting their hopes up.

I've given up. Uninstalled studio, carrara, and Hex and cleaned out all the extraneous daz folders I could find. Just got fed with this being more frustrating then fun.

I have done the same thing Stan.

And the only problem i have with the forums is the die hard daz users who have know clue to how poser works or how to use daz to its fullest potential such as using it for animation treat us poser users like we are their plague. Its rather disheartening . they can't understand that when poser makes a new version of their program all their older program stuff will still work in Poser with no extra hoops to jump through. unlike in daz. when daz makes a new version. Everything changes every time.
Every new version requires you to buy all new products or tools to get the older version products to work.. that is just sorry in my book.

I have said it many times I am a Poser and Daz3 a user those are what I am buying products for
I have no use for daz4.5 or even daz5 useless it content can also be used in poser with out "having to export that into this to make it work in here". screw that noise.

I only come here to buy environment models now. and even those have become fewer.
So I could care less anymore about how the shopping part of the site works, seeming i have been buying much less mostly because of the lack of poser supported products.

...well seeing as I have just received the missing components for my workstation build, I have a new project ahead of me. Like Ivy I will mainly be sticking with Studio 3.1.2.32 and moving more to PP2012. I still have a soft spot for Bryce (which really needs to be brought into the 64 bit world) as I find it's scene generation system and lighting to be so much more intuitive than Carrara's.

I will give 4.0 Pro (I have ver 0.3.37) another chance before I say whether I'll use it or not.

I may even give Hex another shot because I'll have more memory and a improved cooling, though I have slowly been working with Blender and finally getting a grasp of it's setup.

Granted, I am not about to dump hundreds into new wardrobes for Genesis. The Autofit Tool while a nice concept, still has two serious flaws. Supposedly I have heard the CCT's (which come with the Pro version) can be used to help with fitting so that is something I will investigate.

Admittedly I realise I cannot fault Daz for lack of third party plugin updates as those rest with the individual vendors/creators.

Poseworks has all but disappeared from the scene so I don't think there will ever be any more updates for those wonderful effects tools past the Studio3.x ones.

On the other hand DreamLight which is an active provider of Daz plugins and content as well as being a major promoter of Daz Studio, has shown no indication of releasing an update for its flagship LDP system. Some would ask why bother when you have UE, Lantios, Cloud Nine and other IDL light sets available, especially when I will now have the processing power to support them? Well for one, as I have mentioned before, I like the look LDP gives to certain scenes. It is a "richer" and warmer light, and the system is extremely easy to use. There is even an IDL option available. But agreed, this is something we need to take up with DreamLight directly.

One of the bones (OK pun intended) I and many have with StudioPro is that unlike Poser, PoserPro and Marvelous Designer, in Daz Studio, one is limited to only manipulating rather than actually creating cloth dynamics. In many ways from what I have seen the system appears to be more of a glorified cloth morphing system than true dynamics. For StudioPro to really be complete it needs give full dynamics control to the user as Poser/MD allow. There have been calls here in the forums for Daz to look at some form of partnership with MD to bring full cloth dynamics into the Studio application, be it a new "built in" routine or a bridge plugin (like Reality is for LuxRender) to the MD application. Both the Personal and Small Business licences for MD are a fraction of the cost of Optiotex's 3D Runway Software tools (the latter which are specifically targeted at high end clothing designers and makers, not hobbyist 3D artists).

To be taken seriously, The Studio Application needs to stop being an ongoing beta testing ground as well. ".0" releases of Studio need to be a complete working application like Poser or Vue when rolled out. Yes, all new software releases have bugs at first, that is what SPs are for. However, out of the box I found PP2010 and even Poser8 to be far more stable than Studio3A (which I had used for several years prior to purchasing PP2010) or 4.0 even in a 32 bit environment. All of the features work the first time, there is no "well we are still working on the Materials Room so several functions aren't available right now but they will be 'soon'". If Daz eventually intends to derive income from their software products they need to produce stable and fully working ones at rollout. I realise Daz is not a large company, so maybe they need to scale their focus down a bit and concentrate on producing one solid dependable application at a time rather than three or four.

If Studio is to be Daz's single full featured application on par with Poser Pro, then that is where all the effort needs to be placed. True this may not sit well with Carrara and Bryce users, but if Daz is dead serious about making it's Studio application the best it can be then it needs to dive in head first and fix the ongoing issues with ver4.x before even thinking about ver.5. Once 4 is stable and it's tools/features all work, then they can begin planning the next ".0" update. And that should not be released until it is a totally finished product (which includes a functional updated SDK and basic plugin updates in place).

Conceptually Daz can do a lot of good here. However, instead of becoming distracted with "new and shiny" every year or so, they need to concentrate on creating software that is "stable and complete".

Just as a note, the PoseWorks shaders 9except pwSketch) are now owned by DAZ and were long since updated to work in DS4, with a more recent update to make sure they also auto-recompile for the newer version of 3delight in 4.5.

...that is good news, I love the effects I get with Ghost and Surface and I still find Catch to be essential when doing very involved pics that require multiple render passes (not really good at adding in shadows or reflections in postwork). pwSurface is particularly important as I do not have any UE expansions beyond the 'built in" lights, effects, and surface shaders.

Does one just need to reset the DLs then?

...oh, and any news from the DreamLight camp about updates to LDP and MoodMaster?

You know, I'd feel more sympathy if I ever logged into Smith Micro or Runtime DNA forums to complain about all the stuff that is released that is Poser only. There is so much stuff I'd love to use in Daz but it is made only for Poser. I guess I better head over to their forums asap and start complaining. "Stop releasing this cool stuff for Poser only, you're alienating people who use Daz."

As I mentioned above Development has to stop being distracted by new and shiny and focus on just making things work.

In a sense DazStudio is the 3D world's Edsel. lots of neat flashy accessories on a poorly built body and chassis.

I like the ease of use Studio offers compared to other apps as I am an artist first and computer geek a very distant second. When I first encountered Studio (ver 1.5) I said to myself, finally, here is the CG application I have been waiting years for. No more calculations, no more programming, no more compiling and hoping all that time spent doesn't end up in a slew of error statements (yes, I came from, the "stone age days" of CG). I've worked with other 3D applications and while they have a lot of good points (and tend top be more stable) they just didn't feel as intuitive. Working in Daz Studio just seemed more "natural" to me as an artist.

We've all laughed at the "Make Art" button jokes, but by the same token, the less time spent with complicated processes and routines, the more time for attention to creativity, and isn't that what this is all supposed to be about? "Releasing the artist from within?"

Instead it lately feels more like "Releasing the beta tester/bug reporter from within" (and in the case of S3A, paying for the privilege to do so).

Again no software is 100% "perfect". I'm sure even the high end apps like 3DS, Lightwave, and Maya have their own issues that need resolution from time to time. When Studio was free, I could accept all the constant updates. When I had to shell out my hard earned zlotys for S3A I expected a complete usable product. Instead what I got was a total wreck that in the end after all the overhauls, never fully worked right. In auto industry terms that is what is known as a "lemon". Instead of a Mercedes, we ended up with a Yugo.

So why continue to stick around? Why not totally jump ship to another application camp?

1. because of the investment I already have in all this.

...and...

2. as difficult as this may seem, I can still see a lot of good potential in the Studio concept.

To paraphrase an old proverb, A fancy flimsy house built on sand will never outlast a simple solid one built on rock.

I for one am enjoying the shopping experience as of late, no issues here so far,

I don't know how anyone could say this. Perhaps if they are new and don't own much content. I find it really hard to know if I have already purchased something in the past, because all memory of that is gone. Even new products since the site change, which are supposed to show up as being previously purchased, don't. I don't get any warning that I have bought stuff before, and I have a lot of content.
This means that if I do want an old product I have to check really carefully that I don't already own it. I really miss that feature. It save me money lots of times. Because i haven't installed all my content it is not an easy search as the file name of the zip doesn't show up on the promo info, otherwise I could find it easily.
Resetting stuff is also hard because I can't search my previous purchases on my account page anymore.
And the plat club voucher - I keep forgetting to apply it.
Plus I too am very disappointed that the newer figures don't work in poser.
Love esther

...just went to the PC store pages to pick up Jack's latest creation and after going through ten or so pages, noticed everything there that is not a prop, pose set, or vehicle is for Genesis. The first Gen4 Items I came across were the Happy Camper for V4 outfit and a texture set for Bunny Dazed that were released months ago.

Seems like if you don't jump on the Genesis bus, it's looking pretty much like the end of the line. After just over four years in this, really not into starting all over again.

...yeah, the more I see of this, the more I am considering letting my PC membership lapse when it expires in two months.

well there is a way to use genesis in poser already. snarlygribbly created a script that lets you subD your scene. this means you can have low poly V5 etc in poser, and then you can maybe have lots and lots of poser people because they are low poly, then you can subD for the render. This could be really advantageous. Just the problem if the clothes and hair and textures don't come across all that well into poser.
Also DAZ say/hint there is something coming for genesis in poser. so all is not definitely lost.
Love esther

I for one am enjoying the shopping experience as of late, no issues here so far,

I don't know how anyone could say this. Perhaps if they are new and don't own much content. I find it really hard to know if I have already purchased something in the past, because all memory of that is gone. Even new products since the site change, which are supposed to show up as being previously purchased, don't. I don't get any warning that I have bought stuff before, and I have a lot of content.
This means that if I do want an old product I have to check really carefully that I don't already own it. I really miss that feature. It save me money lots of times. Because i haven't installed all my content it is not an easy search as the file name of the zip doesn't show up on the promo info, otherwise I could find it easily.
Resetting stuff is also hard because I can't search my previous purchases on my account page anymore.

Regarding Genesis... what I've heard from PAs who make content for figures (e.g. clothing) is that content for V4 isn't really selling anymore (content for M4 has almost never sold very well). It takes a fair amount of time to make clothing, and if it doesn't sell, say, at least 200 copies during the intro, the creator is probably going to end up making way below minimum wage on the product (with no health benefits, etc.) Content for Genesis is selling better, so that's what a lot of vendors are going to make. I can't blame them. They're doing this to make a living, after all. (And I know there are now a bunch of people pounding their keyboards to tell me that I'm wrong and that THEY would buy more V4 etc. content... but the thing is, the sales numbers just don't back that up.)

I do hope that whatever DAZ has cooking will result in Genesis being able to be used within Poser. I'm cautiously optimistic that the new release of Poser, which exposes many more application functions to scripting, will help. (Apparently these changes made it possible to write a version of Reality for Poser, so I'm hoping....) I still think DAZ intended for Genesis to work with Poser at or shortly after release, but a variety of glitches and perhaps misunderstandings got in the way.

There are still a number of problems with the Genesis/Tri-Ax platform, such as the "clingwrap" morph transfer and the wonky artifacts sometimes introduced by smoothing, and I really truly wish we had a more flexible dynamic cloth system that would be as easy to use as the Optitex clothes (which can be fitted to a figure and posed before draping, rather than requiring an animated drape), but would work better with a wider variety of clothing and would take figure scaling and morphs into account. I also wish shaders made with Shader Mixer had better preview features.

But then again, I'm still wishing for an Unflatable Pony, or at least the Moolennium Cow. ;)

I can't blame anyone who's gotten tired of waiting for these problems to get sorted, any more than I can blame content creators to moving to where the market is. For most of us, this is a hobby, and hobbies are supposed to be fun. All I can hope at this point is that things do change around here within the next few months and that DAZ is able to gradually build up the trust and community that have been lost over the past year.

i'm on mac but if i wasn't would that help with all my previous purchases too?
Love esther

It will warn you if you try to buy something you have purchased before. It's not 100% reliable as is is based on product names and some of them have changed over time, but I believe it will catch 98+% of them. Doesn't work with stuff you have bought in bundles though (but it works on the bundles themselves).

Cypherfox is working on something similar that I believe will work for Macs too, but I haven't tried it myself. Check out this thread:

Doesn't work with stuff you have bought in bundles though (but it works on the bundles themselves).

Do we still have a "Fun with Bundles" list anywhere that could be used to help with this? Is there some online format that could be used that would help you add this functionality? I have a website with software that can be used to store a database with RSS feeds, for example.

You know, I'd feel more sympathy if I ever logged into Smith Micro or Runtime DNA forums to complain about all the stuff that is released that is Poser only. There is so much stuff I'd love to use in Daz but it is made only for Poser. I guess I better head over to their forums asap and start complaining. "Stop releasing this cool stuff for Poser only, you're alienating people who use Daz."